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Baselight for FCP?
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[Bill Davis] “Apple (via the iTunes store) pretty much slashed distribution costs in orders of magnitude.”
Adobe has had all digital download before the app store, I think CS3 was the first time I took part in the download offering. They do sell boxed versions of all their software as well, parts and suites alike.
Their rental model is pretty awesome, too.
It allows extremely cheap “facility” scaling for shorter periods if you already have the computing hardware.
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[Herb Sevush] “With a few million Legacy seats in play, I’d guess a fairly large co-operative group could be put together to license UI and other property rights. I’m quite sure Apple would never sell.”
Sounds like a job for Kickstarter. You don’t need Apple’s IP. They are giving away the playback engine and FCP needed a UI freshening anyway.
How much to fund development on such a project? I’d say $750K minimum. Double that to be safe, $1.5M. You need a five thousand editors to pony up a few hundred dollars each to make it happen.
Best,
Andy -
[Jeremy Garchow] “And what would the new engine be? Can’t be QuickTime, so you’d have to build/borrow/license another one. “
If you are reviving the ghost of legacy FCP, you only need to put it on Macs. Apple put their playback engine in every copy of Lion.
Best,
Andy -
So how come their own software is so slow to uptake?
And why build another NLE around another proprietary engine?
Why limit yiurself to Mac? Hasn’t the past 6 months been a huge clue to not put all your junk in one sock?
I don’t buy it. Pun absolutely intended.
No one would make that mistake.
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[Bill Davis] “The big driver was their ownership of the “end to end” supply chain represented by the iTunes store. THAT is the huge Apple competitive advantage that makes a modern price like $299 for a sophisticated piece of software like X possible.”
There’s also the shift of low-level development work away from Pro Apps to Core OS. In the past, the FCP team would need to code their own optimizations for multi-core processors, GPU acceleration, etc. Now all of that is wrapped into the OS, and the Pro Apps team can work more efficiently by staying higher in the stack. So the App Store exclusivity cuts distribution costs, and FCPX is still subsidized by the platform effect of Lion and the Mac.
Best,
Andy -
[Jeremy Garchow] “So how come their own software is so slow to uptake?”
Slow on what uptake? FCPX is using the new APIs (public in Lion, private in 10.6.7+).
[Jeremy Garchow] “And why build another NLE around another proprietary engine?
Why limit yiurself to Mac? Hasn’t the past 6 months been a huge clue to not put all your junk in one sock?”
The premise I was responding to was the idea that some third party could build the FCP8 everyone wanted if only Apple would hand over the legacy IP (Robert’s opening post and Dave’s subsequent post). FCP was always Mac-only, so why not this imaginary progeny? It isn’t like the legacy code would be all that portable after all this time.
But outside that narrow rhetorical perspective, you’re right. The reality is there is a reason no one is doing this. There is a reason Adobe and Avid have their own playback engines. There is a reason we don’t have the Pixelmator of NLEs.
Bottom line: if you really think about it, building an indie FCP8 is totally impractical, regardless of whether or not Apple handed over any IP.
Best,
Andy -
[Andrew Richards] ” FCP was always Mac-only, so why not this imaginary progeny? It isn’t like the legacy code would be all that portable after all this time.”
Wasn’t the original FCP Windows and Mac? I believe it became a Mac only platform after Apple bought it. But in any case I don’t think it will ever happen. I think Lightworks is a good example. Some will be enthusiastic about bringing an old favorite back from the past but it seems to take a pretty serious software team to tackle all the technical issues and iron out all of the bugs. And I guess in a way when you choose the editor you want to work with you are also choosing the software provider you want to work with and the one that’s going to be around a while and make decisions that make sense.
Robert Brown
Editor/VFX/Colorist – FCP, Smoke, Quantel Pablo, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Prohttps://vimeo.com/user3987510/videos
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When it was a Macromedia project it was for Windows NT. Then Apple acquired it and spent ten years developing it for the Mac. I just doubt much of that development at all would port nicely back to Windows in the impossible scenario in which Apple relinquishes the code. And even then, it would still be a 32 bit QuickTime app. Apple had to abandon that code (albeit due to their own actions related to 64 bit Carbon), and anyone else would have to as well.
It doesn’t matter. There isn’t room in the market for another general purpose NLE.
Best,
Andy -
[Andrew Richards] “There isn’t room in the market for another general purpose NLE.”
With 6 other general purpose NLE’s already on the market, aside from Legacy, there wasn’t room for FCPX either. A product makes it’s own room.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] ” there wasn’t room for FCPX either”
Herb, didn’t X make it’s own room by simply making the timeline so much more different than the other NLEs?
It seems they set themselves apart by doing that. Avid or PPr for the old school timeline and X if you like this new way.
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